Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday February 05, 2012 @07:59PM
from the mi-go-mail dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Space.com reports that an online petition directed at the USPS and its Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) hopes to collect 100,000 signatures or more by March 13, the 82nd anniversary of the announcement of Pluto's discovery as the New Horizons robotic spacecraft gets closer to flyby Pluto and its moons in 2015. 'This is a chance for us all to celebrate what American space exploration can achieve though hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry, and the uniquely human drive to explore,' reads the petition. Whether or not the New Horizons team is successful in getting the USPS to honor their spacecraft's mission, the probe will have delivered a stamp to Pluto. New Horizons includes nine stowaways including one of the 1991 'Not Yet Explored' Pluto stamps together with other mementos including a Florida quarter, a small container with an ounce of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, and a small segment of 2004 Ansari X Prize winner SpaceShipOne, the first privately-funded crewed spacecraft. 'Why nine mementos? I bet you can guess,' says Dr. Alan Stern, New Horizons' Principal Investigator adding why he wanted to send one of the Pluto stamps on the mission. 'Pluto may not have been explored when that stamp set came out, but we were going to conquer that,' says Stern. 'I wanted to fly it as a sort of 'in your face' thing.'"

'This is a chance for us all to celebrate what American space exploration can achieve though hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry and the uniquely human drive to explore...'

The spacecraft is the example of what can be achieved by "hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry and the uniquely human drive to explore..." If it were easy, someone else would have done it, or even attempted it. The stamp is just a stamp. Get a clue.

There's a lot of 'Hurf durf, the space program is no more. Our technical edge is gone. Oh, woe!' on Slashdot, and it really ticks me off. Hey, why don't you read a bit what NASA's been up to lately, rather than griping about how

What people don't realize is that in a short time, the new definition of the Solar System will contain 16 planets, not 8. Pluto will be "reinstated" by the few who incorrectly "demoted" it, actually they will be TOLD this and they will accept it or lose their funding, or be relegated to a future not in astronomy, as well as adding Eris, 2005 FY9, 2003 EL61, Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, and Varuna. Proper names will be given to 2005 FY9 and 2003 EL61 of course. The rest of the Kuiper Belt will be designated from

Why should New Horizons get a stamp, and why not Cassini-Huygens, the Galileo probe, the Magellan orbiter, or MESENGER? The others all completed their missions and studied real planets, while New Horizons has not arrived at the minor planet Pluto yet. Get over it, Pluto fanboys, your boring little ice ball is not a planet!!!

My plans for death (though I have yet to find a good legal way to have them fulfilled) are to have all recyclable parts (joint replacements, etc.) removed and reused/recycled, all acceptable organs donated, and the remainder of my body being donated to research and/or education, with the exception of my head (sans eyeballs and/or whatever was donated), which will be involved in its own ritual.

I intend that a significant portion of my fortune (you know, once I have a fortune) will go to whomever can bring ab

My personal use of stamps is down about 50%, as more of my bills are paid electronically. As more and more data replaces first class letters, postage stamps will soon be a relic. So what can replace them as a way to publicly commemorate an event? I recognize the Post Office will not vanish entirely, since we still need to deliver physical items sometimes, but those rarely use regular stamps.

Don't worry, the post office killed off the stamp collecting hobby years ago. And the US mint is threatening to do the same to (commemorative) coin collecting.

The post office kept making stamps for the silliest things and so the hobby died due to over-saturation. Perhaps we need to realize that not -everything- needs to be commemorated in coin or stamp format and keep it for the big things that happen.

Yes, like that, its completely ruined the market for stamp collecting because so many stamps are purely produced for collectors. The US post office has been doing it for several years, the US mint has just started doing it in the last few years by producing presidential dollars and Native American dollars no one wants but "collectors" snatch them up hoping they will be worth lots of money later (they won't be) and making worthless commemorative coins for collectors which they buy in hopes they will sell for more later on (chances are they won't). I mean, today you can't even hardly give away modern (non silver) proof sets. While older coins are rising in value and the value of junk silver/gold has gone up dramatically, there are few modern coins made at any western mint that has retained its issue price value except for a rare few which now have a higher scrap silver/gold value than issue price. This is true for the US mint, the Royal Mint, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Perth Mint and many private and European mints. About the only positive gain in modern commemorative is from China which is dangerous for a western collector to collect due to the huge amount of fakes and lack of information.

The market for stamp (or coin) collecting isn't ruined. All this simply means collectors will ignore the "for-the-collectors" issues and only collect normal stamps. Just because those commemorative stamps and coins have no collectors value, doesn't many ALL new coins and stamps issued have zero value.

I don't know much about the stamp market, but I know a decent amount about the coin collecting market and normal issue coins are next to worthless and will continue to be worthless. Just look at the mintage numbers, they are all insanely high. About the only modern (1970-present) US coins that have been solid investments in the past 20-30 years have been precious metal coins (gold eagles, silver eagles, etc.) and the occasional error coin. A few years ago there was a great stir as Presidential dollars were

I don't think I have used a stamp since the 90s and I could get by just fine if the USPS just made a monthly visit to my house, instead of daily. All they do is bring me crap I have to pay to dispose of (and it all DOES go into the trash on my way back from the mail box).

Rats, my snail mail is slow enough already (three weeks for a package from NJ to MD, by way of side trips to Florida and Virginia--maybe they got a slingshot gravity boost down there?). If my mail has to go to Pluto, I'll have to get relativistic to live long enough for my snail mail to get to me.

Is the "drive to explore" uniquely human?I don't know.My chickens are pretty inquisitive.

parent++

We humans tend to think we're very special, and we are - we are more intelligent, we are more empathic, etc... but we cannot claim that we are the only ones possessing intelligence or inquisitiveness or even homosexuality.

The Post Office is losing money, do we really want to do this? I have a radical proposal. How about the Post Office printing just one stamp for each denomination. Once a stamp design is decided, NEVER change it. This printing up new stamps to satisfy stamp collectors is lunacy. If the stamp collectors want new stamps to collect why don't they hire a printing company to issue stamps just for their personal hobby. Yes, they will tell you that their hobby adds to the revenue of the Post Office. Does the

"...the uniquely human drive to explore."
There is absolutely nothing unique about this. A great deal of the animal life that exists spends the majority of their time doing what could be interpreted exploring. From ants foraging for food to monkeys waving their arms running around in the jungle, nearly every animal explores. It is a fundamental behavior to many forms of life. Humans are actually much less likely to explore than other animals, since we live in dwellings with monotonously repetitive lives on